All I Can Do
by Shalen
Summary: One-shot. Ayumu is leaving home to find his brother. Hiyono comes to say good-bye. Not sure what else to say about it. Summaries are hard! If you like Spiral, please read and review!


**Author's notes:**

Disclaimer: I do not own Spiral or any of the Spiral characters.

Hi! Thank you for clicking on my story!

Please don't forget to review; I would love to see what people think! I tried to keep them in character as much as possible, but there may still be a bit of OOC-ness lurking around… sigh Well, I guess you can't always stay completely in character or it wouldn't be a fan fiction.

This is my first fanfic (that I've written down), so I may be a bit naïve. I like it, but maybe it's really sappy. And it is kinda pointless… but…

Anyway, I worked really hard on it, on and off for a couple months. Gee, what will I do if I write something that's long and actually has a plot?!

Please review! Flames are not welcomed, but constructive criticism is. There is a difference.

**All I Can Do**

_by: Shalen_

"You're not coming back… are you?"

Ayumu blinked and halted when he heard the voice. He turned away from the yacht docked at the end of the pier, away from the sea and toward the land, the city's noise, cars, and lofty buildings, to see Hiyono, a melancholy look in her rich brown eyes.

She was standing maybe fifteen feet away from him, but somehow she seemed both very near to him, and very far off in the distance. She looked sad, but not in a straightforward way. Everything about her looked impassive and emotionless, but her eyes gave her sadness away. It made her look very small standing there on the pier with the concrete ground and concrete buildings as a backdrop. Even the gray sky now seemed as if made of concrete.

For some reason, it made Ayumu feel sorry for her, somewhat ashamed, and maybe even slightly regretful. He didn't want her to be here. It made things uncomfortable.

"What are you doing here?" Ayumu asked, not harshly or gently. His voice was devoid of any emotion.

"You would have left without saying goodbye… without saying anything."

She still kept any feelings out of her voice. Ayumu looked away. "But how did you find me?"

"It's a long story. The short version is: I figured it out from the clues. It was a simple deduction," Hiyono said dully.

There was a small silence in which Ayumu looked a little surprised, and then tried to conceal an amused smile. Finally he began to laugh.

Hiyono blinked several times, looking rather astonished. She asked, "What?"

He gave her a rare smile, one that was small and grim, but nonetheless may have held a bit of warmth. "Nothing. You're just smarter than I give you credit for, that's all."

He expected this remark to bring out the regular Hiyono, the one who would growl in aggravation, ask what that was supposed to mean, chastise him in shrill tones for insulting her intelligence, and possibly even discipline him with a Hiyono Punch attack. But she only said, with a touch of sadness in her voice, "It's from being around you so much."

Ayumu suddenly felt a pang of shame. He didn't know why this specifically triggered it.

"So, what exactly is going on?" Hiyono asked rather blandly, as if she didn't really care.

"It was Eyes," Ayumu explained, in his blank, indifferent way. "He told me that on Kyushu there had been a clue to Kiyotaka's disappearance uncovered. He offered to let me take one of his private boats to go look into it and see what I can come up with. It most likely will lead me to the U.K., he said, so I'll then return there with him, and see if I can find my brother."

There was a long silence. The wind coming off the sea picked up and several stray feathers blew over the pier between Hiyono and Ayumu, but their eyes didn't stray from one another for a second. Both were trying to figure out the other, but both faces were empty.

Seagulls called in the distance, their wild, haunting cries dancing on the ocean wind, rising over the steady lapping of the waves on the boats and the pier. Accompanied with the distant, soft sound of lines clinking within the masts of sailboats, and the far-off sound of bells on the harbor buoys clanging as the buoys moved with the waves of the ocean, it created a kind of wild music of the sea.

Ayumu waited for Hiyono to say what she came here to say, but she was silent. Wasn't she going to say, "Ayumu, you can't just run off like this!" or "Ayumu, you have to come back!" or "Ayumu, it's too dangerous to get involved!"? She only stared at him, her face uncharacteristically unreadable.

"Well," Ayumu finally said, "Aren't you gonna try and stop me?"

"No."

"Then why did you come?"

"You would have left without saying goodbye," she repeated, and turned her face down toward the ground, so that her bangs hid her eyes, "I just wanted to say goodbye to you."

Ayumu's eyes widened. There it was. There was unmistakable grief in her voice that time. She was struggling to keep it suppressed. Suddenly Ayumu felt really bad. Was she really this upset that he was leaving? He was hurting her, wasn't he?

"Hiyono…" he began. Then he noticed something. Her shoulders were shaking. "Hiyono…" he said, and started to walk toward her. As he got closer, he saw a tear roll down her cheek and drop onto the ground. Ayumu reached her and put a hand on her shoulder. She froze.

Ayumu wasn't good with sad people. He supposed he could have ignored her tears. But he felt so sorry for her. Seeing her cry pulled at something within him. It had the last time he saw her cry, too. Still, not many experiences gave him that awful feeling.

He didn't know whether it was that, or that fact that her tears were for him that made him want to comfort her. He decided he would do his best.

"Hiyono, don't cry. It's okay, really. What are you crying about, anyway? Surely not me. Come on, I'm not worth crying over. You should save your tears for something important."

He felt really awkward, but it seemed to be working. Either that or Hiyono was finding her composure on her own. She seemed to be embarrassed. She turned to face away from him, and wiped her eyes.

"Sorry," she said, "Sorry." Having regained control, she faced him again, but she didn't look him in the eye. "I'm fine." She put on a weak smile. "I'll be fine."

Ayumu couldn't tell if that was true or not. It seemed like there was something else, something there…

"Look at me," he said, as if to a small child, but, like a small child, she determinedly remained staring down and to the side. He was sure he could tell if she looked at him.

"Hiyono, look at me," he repeated, and she still wouldn't comply.

"Hiyono…" He raised his hand to her chin. Once again, his touch seemed to petrify her. Without resistance, he lifted her head so that she was staring, wide-eyed, directly into his eyes.

Something strange came over Ayumu. No, she wasn't all right, that was for sure. She was desperately fighting back the tears. And when she looked into his eyes, it seemed that something came over her too.

"There's something else you want to say," he said, not as a question. He dropped his hand and stepped back a couple steps. He took a guess: "If you want to yell at me, go ahead."

Finally, Hiyono gave in and her eyes filled up with tears.

"No!" she yelled, and she ran into him so hard he was nearly knocked over. She clung to him, sobbing, and shaking her head back and forth. "No… no… no… no… no… That's not it. That's not it at all. It's just… I don't want you to go away, Ayumu! Don't go! Please don't go!"

Ayumu was completely taken by surprise. Stunned, he had no idea what to do, so he just stood there.

Hiyono clutched his jacket tightly in her hands, as if to hold on to him for a little longer.

"I swore to myself I wouldn't do this! Ayumu, I _promised_! It's your choice, after all. And I know how much it means to you, to find your brother. All I'm doing is making things harder.

"But… I can't help it! I'm sorry, Ayumu. I thought I was strong. I thought I cared about your happiness enough to…" she paused, and sobbed a few times before continuing, "But I'm selfish and weak! And I know this sounds awful… No, it is awful, but what about me? What am I supposed to do? And what about Madoka? You're all she has. I thought you were going to protect her.

"This… this is really terrible, Ayumu, and I should never, ever, ever, ever say this, but… you always say that you aren't like your brother, but now you're going to leave just like he did!"

Madoka.

Ayumu was numb. He felt like he had been plunged into ice water.

Hiyono's words hurt. They hurt him a lot, but she was right.

He hadn't thought about it that way. He had told himself that he was doing this for Madoka, and that he himself didn't care about his brother—Kiyotaka had abandoned them after all—but suddenly something was brought up from inside him that chilled him to the bone.

He wasn't doing this for Madoka. He was doing this for himself.

And he hadn't planned to return, not unless he eventually found Kiyotaka alive and well. Hiyono's words had exposed what he was about to do. He hadn't thought about it from Madoka's point of view. He hadn't told her, he hadn't wanted her getting involved in trying to find Kiyotaka just to get hurt again. But she would be abandoned a second time. What would that do to her? After Kiyotaka's disappearance she was never the same. She might not particularly get along with Ayumu, but she was always a little paranoid that he would disappear too, so much that he always had to tell her that he wasn't like Kiyotaka and he would never do that. He promised he wouldn't desert her.

And Hiyono. She had never even crossed his mind. She would just forget about him, wouldn't she? He would eventually become just a dim memory, an acquaintance from the past, right?

That's what he had thought. Well, it was true; they had been through a lot together. Did she really care about him that much?

He suddenly thought of the night last fall when Hiyono had stood in front of all those people at the dance. Ayumu could see her clearly in his mind, her smiling face, the way her hands had clasped in front of her then wandered up to touch her pendant around her neck, the sparkling background behind her. She had looked so pretty that night, and so happy, she was positively glowing.

"_I know you are only supposed to dedicate to one person, and until last week I thought I knew without a doubt who that person was. But I'm sorry. There are two people I just can't choose between. They are the two most important guys ever to me. Firstly, my brother Satoru. I only wish he could be here to see me tonight, but… maybe he is. I hope his spirit is here, watching over his little sister. And secondly, someone who is here, Ayumu Narumi."_

Standing there in the ocean wind, Ayumu felt like an idiot.

She had been so happy then, and she had been smiling at him. She had dedicated to him, right up there with her brother. That was big. Why hadn't he remembered that? Just now, he could have simply abandoned her.

He felt terrible. There was a sinking, twisting, wrenching feeling of guilt and sympathy in his gut.

"Hiyono…" he began, but he didn't know what to say. What _could_ he say?

A little ill at ease, he slowly put his arms around her. It surprised Hiyono; she stopped crying and went silent and still. Maybe he was acting weird, but he didn't care.

"I'm… so sorry." Oh, man. Hiyono deserved better. Why did she have to care about such a stupid, heartless idiot like him?

But could he just give up searching for Kiyotaka? This opportunity could be the only chance he would ever get to find his brother. He felt ashamed and apologetic; it was true, but if Kiyotaka could be found alive…

Hiyono interrupted his thoughts. "No, I'm sorry, Ayumu," she said, and she let go and pulled away from him.

She was sorry? What did she have to be sorry for? She was right, after all, and he was the self-centered, inconsiderate pig.

"You need to go."

"Huh?"

"You're worried now. About me. Right?"

Hiyono was looking up at him. Her face was red and he could see the trails the tears left on her cheeks, but she was smiling in a sad, warm kind of way. Her words were right, of course, but he said nothing. She continued. "Well, don't be. I'm sorry, I only made it a hard decision for you. What I said a minute ago, just forget about it. This is something that you need to do, for yourself and for Madoka. If you want me to, I'll explain to her. So go ahead."

"Yeah." His mind was made up. Ayumu turned away from her and took a few steps toward the waiting boat. But he stopped and turned back. "I'll come back. I promise. Tell Madoka everything. And tell her I'll be back… in a couple of months at most. If I can't find anything in that time, I can't find anything at all."

A hopeful expression crossed Hiyono's face, but it was fleeting and evanescent.

Ayumu turned and began to go to the boat, but stopped and looked again at Hiyono when she said, "Then… I'll wait for you."

"That's it? Just wait?"

"That's all I can do."


End file.
